With Zen delayed, AMD could tap Carrizo for 2016 desktop hardware

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When AMD launched Carrizo earlier this year, it kept the part mobile-only. Carrizo’s entire design was tuned for mobile hardware, and AMD did a number of briefings on how the chip’s power consumption improvements and overall performance per watt were strongest in low power envelopes. It’s therefore a touch surprising to hear that AMD is reportedly planning to bring a desktop version of the chip to market.

Zen’s delay, however, may have left AMD with little choice, since it can’t afford to go an entire year without at least some new products in the market. The company is reportedly prepping a set of both mobile and desktop cores under the Bristol Ridge moniker, built for socket FP4 and AM4 respectively. FP4 would continue to support both DDR3 and DDR4, while AM4 would supposedly be DDR4-only. We know Carrizo has a DDR4 controller on-board, since the embedded version of the product launched with DDR4 support earlier this fall, so it’s not surprising to hear that the same hardware would roll over to desktop.

Here’s the supposed list of desktop SKUs:

There’s almost certainly some errors here, since it’s highly unlikely that AMD would launch a dual-core SKU with a 2.8GHz core clock at 65W. The high-end SKU, if accurate, would essentially match Kaveri’s clock range (3.6GHz – 4GHz) but offer faster DDR4 support for APUs, and a much-improved power envelope (65W vs. 95W). Unfortunately, the performance gain is still going to be thin — 5-10% clock for clock, two years after Kaveri first shipped, simply isn’t going to impress desktop users. Overclocking headroom isn’t going to be anything to write home about either; Carrizo will be stretching as it is to push into 4GHz territory and 65W — just as Kaveri’s power consumption and thermals rose more rapidly above 3.5GHz, we’d expect Carrizo to do something similar. One of Carrizo’s great strengths in mobile was the fact that the improved design let AMD ship 15W parts would more graphics cores enabled. Desktop Kaveri / Godavari never had that problem, robbing the still-hypothetical new chip of one of its competitive advantages against its predecessor.

Could Bristol Ridge be a 14nm chip?

One point raised by Tech Report is that Bristol Ridge could be an early 14nm processor. In theory, this makes some sense — it’s a bad idea to try and pull off a die shrink and a new CPU architecture simultaneously, and the Excavator uarch is well known to AMD. Looking at the range of 15W – 35W parts, however, the data suggests a relatively modest bump of 200-300MHz, and TDP envelopes within the ranges AMD has already set.

The bigger reason I think Bristol Ridge will be a 28nm chip, however, is because die shrinks are both expensive and time consuming. In order to have Bristol Ridge ready for a mid-2016 production window, AMD would’ve needed to tape it out by late summer. Keep in mind that back in May, AMD made it quite clear that Zen would arrive by mid-2016, and that Zen was the future of AMD products.

AMD essentially would have had to design Carrizo for 28nm, tape it out, and immediately begin converting the design to 14nm before it even had silicon back from the foundry. I’m not going to say that’s impossible, but it’s insanely risky and I’ve never heard of a foundry doing it.

It’s exceedingly unlikely that AMD took this road, particularly given the modest gains 14nm would deliver. The Excavator core family is played out, everyone knows it, and the company’s engineers have already performed a near-miracle just squeezing a Bulldozer-derived into a 15W form factor. Pouring money into further Excavator R&D would be throwing good funds after bad, and AMD just doesn’t have the money to waste these days.

Tagged In

1. Bristol Ridge is the same die as Carrizo. It was and is expected to be released in 2016 Q2, though this is subject to change. It’s Carrizo (28nm) with higher clocks and better stepping.

2. AM4 mainboards to support Bristol Ridge will be released before Bristol Ridge. They can support either DDR3 or DDR4. Same mainboards will also be used for Summit Ridge, but only the DDR4 versions.

3. Summit Ridge will be based on Zen and FinFet (very likely GloFo 14nm). Up to 8 cores with SMT (2 threads per core). It is expected for Q4 2016, though this is subject to change.

None of this is news of the past weeks, nothing has changed for the past weeks. If you read something else than this, it’s false.

>savt

come to think of it, did AMD ever say that the SMT with Zen is 2 threads per core when they announced it would use SMT?

Anonymous

No, they did not, but it’s 99% sure because everything else makes no sense from an architectural standpoint. Also, there were some leaks saying so.

I think we can safely take it as a fact.

namco

As much as I would like to agree, AMD hasn’t said a word, for all we know they may use more than 2 threads per core, which would push the boundaries of cpu making which IS something AMD likes to do. IF it ends up with 2 threads per core, no biggy, if more, hey that’s fantastic. Only time will tell.

As far as “leaks” go, they usually get it WRONG when it comes to AMD, which is quite sad in all reality.

Michael F

More than 2 way SMT wouldn’t really be pushing any boundaries. IBM’s Power8 architecture uses 8 threads per core and nVIDIA’s Denver had 7. The reason you usually don’t see more than 2 and that Denver was a failure is that superscalars are fairly power consuming and unlike independent cores, can’t be turned off when not in use – even when only executing a single thread, an i7 CPU uses just as much power as if it were executing 2. Intel uses 2 way SMT because it is more efficient than 2 independent cores when it is being used (and usually a desktop OS is executing at least 2 threads), but not so much more efficient that it is better than having cores that can be turned off.

unkle

—– ZEN HAS NOT BEEN DELAYED —–
First of all, AMD has not provided an _official_ release date for Zen, but from the beginning, it was expected that Zen would begin shipping around 4Q 2016. The source provided for Zen being delayed is extremely old (September), and it was esentially a BS article considering the release was always supposed to be 4Q 2016 anyway.
Second of all, AMD just said like two days ago (during an interview with their CFO) that they expect to realize a full year of revenue from Zen in 2017. This means Zen will begin to ship in 2016.
Also keep in mind that GF has been reporting success with their (Samsung) 14nm process. There are also rumors that Zen has already been evaluated and has “met all expectations”, however, I take this with a grain of salt because the CFO did say that it hasn’t taped out yet, but he wasn’t very clear. The consumer version had to have taped out by now considering it takes 12-14 months from tape-out until mass production, and they just said they expect a full year of revenue in 2017. He provided some conflicting information there, but I expect him to understand more about money than processor manufacturing.
…and it goes a little something like this:
AMD: “Hey, we have a new processor called Zen. We will probably release it around the end of 2016.”
Journalists: “ZEN HAS BEEN DELAYED TO LATE 2016!”

juanito506

Non-AMD sources say that Zen has already been taped (tapped?) out, and testing has been done with no “significant” bottlenecks.
AMD’s CFO says that Zen is still to be tapped (taped?) out within a few months.

The question was about a server part, which probably hasn’t taped out yet. The desktop Zen has certainly taped out, otherwise AMD would have to disclose the inevitable delay to Q1 ’17 (by law). AMD is a public company and can’t continue to claim that they are on track for revenue ramp in ’16 with a full year of revenue in ’17 if they know they can’t do it. There are many many laws against it and people go to prison over it.

JumpingJack4

Desktop parts for high end desktop (Zen) and server parts (Zen as well) are one and the same. They are no different die, they are one in the same. The reason desktop will come out first is because AMD does not perform all the validation on desktop parts verse server parts … (Remember Phenom?) Server parts require a higher degree of testing and validation. There is no such thing as taping out a desktop or server Zen CPU, they will be the same silicon — both AMD and Intel do the same thing, the high end desktop chips are server chips rebranded.

Not necessarily. If AMD expects Haswell-like IPC or better, their HEDT die will probably be a quad core die with SMT, just like the i7s, and the server die will be an 8 core die, which will probably also find its way onto AM4.

I’m genuinely hoping I’m wrong, because that pushes out when the version of Zen which interested me most may be released (I want 8 cores with SMT).

That said, AMD is already well along in the development process and a final tapeout can see full production in less than four months total, including production qualifications (yield and quality assurance checks on the process with the design). You have to have the FINAL tape-out, for that, though… AMD only announces a tape-out after they have engineering samples in production, which means they consider the manufacturing of the layer masks and tooling as part of the tape-out, when most consider tape-out as when the design for all of that is complete. That is several months of difference.

I still don’t think Zen’s full die has ever been created and I have good reason to believe we are a couple months into the 12-14 months-to-market window already.

So, in the next few months, we should start hearing about engineering samples, which would still indicate a Q4 ’16 release. From here, we will absolutely hear about a new stepping or two. If we get A0 silicon I’d be astonished, but very pleasantly surprised (they did most reuse existing IP, which simplifies matters greatly as they don’t need to validate existing IP, only the new IP and the final product).

Actually, they’re probably not the same die, though they’re the same core. AM4’s design means different a different die will likely be used on the server to support more PCI-e lanes and SAT (which are on-die with AM4).

At least according to what we know so far.

Shaun Walsh

The question wasnt about a server part, it was about Zen, high end desktop, x86. You can read the full transcript on seeking alpha. They his comment goes on to talk about how the Zen core will be used in many products. Zen hasnt taped out yet, or AMD would have said something. They are very vocal about when they tape out products. If the CFO says that they will be taping out Zen in the coming months, he means Zen core. In September after Jim Keller left, they said Zen core was entering the completion phase. Lisa su said recently they were on track fo 40%… There is nothing in there that suggests Zen has taped out at all.

Zen can’t make it’s introduction in Q4 2016 if it hasn’t taped out, and AMD reported with GloFo that they successfully fabricated samples on 14nm LPP, and you can’t do that without taping out first.

ELLAS

Jim Keller left the company. This simply means ZEN is finished and exceeded expectations. And looking at AMD’s state, they cannot afford a delay anyway. Q2 2016 is high end desktop chips. APU’s come in late 2016 with Server chips in Q1 2017.

ELLAS

Zen is my next major upgrade. Hurry up AMD.

vlackrs

Can we use +am3 with Zen?

e92m3

I can say with nearly 100% certainty that zen will not be running on am3+ platforms.

Personally, I would like to see transition enabled in this fashion, much like we did with thuban.

That said, I strongly doubt that AMD will produce a ddr3/4 memory controller, nor do I think they will contract synopsys to do the same. Include pci-e 3 in the category of reasons why AMD will probably not bother with am3+.
I think we are looking at a full chipset/platform overhaul for Zen (which for the record has no set release date aside from the original ’16 q4 estimate, therefor it cannot logically be ‘delayed’ at this time unless a revised timeline is reaching into ’17…and that has not happened at this time).

AMD already has produced a DDR3/4 controller and it is already in use for their mobile Carrizo chips. I do not believe Zen will use this controller, though, but desktop Carrizo almost certainly will.

That means if you are wanting to buy into the AM4 platform in expectations of a Zen upgrade, you better go with DDR4 while you are at it.

ELLAS

Probably Not. ZEN will be based on the faster and newer DDR4.

Sweetie

DDR4 is not faster. Its only advantages are density and voltage requirement. It’s basically server RAM without ECC… nothing special at all. However, with the shrinking of CPU processes and having the northbridge and such on the CPU the reduced voltage requirements are helpful, I suppose.

florent trepanier

well gf showed a video and skylake run way better on faster ram

Sweetie

That’s because 2133 speed DDR4 is slowwww due to the latency.

florent trepanier

am3+ was arround during core 2 duo time line so do you think you are able to use skylake on 771/5 socket

ATInsider

NO. Zen will not be AM3+ Compatible. But there’s a bonus, the new Socket AM4 will be unified. Meaning all Next Generation CPU’s and APU’s will be under one Socket AM4. That is a huge bonus. This IMO means AM4 will be highly expandable.

Did anybody notice ZEN’s new high speed IMC? Not necessarily Quad-Channel, but something A LOT faster and more efficient. We’ll soon find out in October 2016.

Technically, it’s the site intentionally trying to break adblock and causing havoc. Adblock is working correctly.
Adblock will be fixing the ‘problem’ that certain websites have intentionally introduced very soon ;)

MoogleStiltzkin

i use umatrix, works fine ;x

ZarkBit

block #intelliTXT

AA

Modest gains? I beg to differ, going from 28nm to 14nm brings about big gains especially in power consumption and performance

cmatofte

You misunderstood… Based on the modest numbers in the table, it is unlikely that we are looking at 14nm chips.

Daniel Anderson

If you’re referring to the Bristol Ridge, thats the Carizzo APU that’ll be release ~q2 2016 @ 28nm. Zen is summit ridge and thats q4 2016, which will be on a 14nm FF node.

Daniel Anderson

I don’t understand. I never heard of Zen being delayed. It was always slated for Q4 from what I recall. Also wasn’t the microsoft acquisition just a rumor or do we have actual proof now? Also Carizzo has been slated for a desktop variant for quite some time now as an APU. Carizzo 28nm and Zen 14nm.

Intel999

Every media shrill that has read over the transcript of AMD’s CFO’s presentation is purposely pretending that creating a transcript with him speaking doesn’t lend it itself to misunderstandings. English is the CFO’s second or third language. Tbh, it is sometimes difficult to understand him live, much less when a third party is guessing as to what he is saying and putting their guesses into a transcript.
Of course, some media outlets, such as this one, goes even further to create a headline to get clicks by using “with Zen delayed” to start an article discussing APUs that have been on AMD’s roadmap for well over a year.
With Glofo being the fab to produce Zen, it is very possible that Zen will be delayed. However, as of right now AMD’s official stance is sales in Q4 2016. Keep in mind, Intel, the mighty chip fabber above all others, is having considerable yield issues at 14 nm so unless Samsung has really helped Glofo step up their game it is likely Zen will not be rolling out of the fabs in any great volume at the outset.

Daniel Anderson

So first off, FUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu(you know how this one ends). Having your screen name of discuss i wouldn’t expect you have an objective outlook but hats off to you.

I do not disagree. I’ve often said to my AMD loving “friends” that even though I root for the underdog, I do what I can to help the underdog and have *tried* to recommend the underdog when viable. An entity with over 2 billion dollars for R&D alone (which is more than AMD and nvidia combined) might bring out something we haven’t expected/seen when their only competitor brings out their top dawg to really assert dominance to put it likely.

With that said, I don’t think they’d push too hard. As projections mention Zen is supposed to be formidable against Haswell-E so I don’t think Intel will do it just yet. With Zen+ well underway I don’t believe Intel will have to do much until the successor in order to simply maintain their position.

(when I say “friend” mean those that oppose the objective opinion of someone who has purchased solely AMD products since athlon x64 [single core] days. 2016 will be the year I turn to intel if AMD doesn’t deliver).

vrm

For SOC needs, there is already the R-series SOC, even the one based on the Carrizo line. OEMs can leverage that for PCs if they want- that already supports DDR4.

I am not sure why all these “erudite” writings propound this nonsense about Bristol Ridge being just “carrizo on the dekstop”. What does it offer over Kaveri/Godavari, besides possibly increased cost of the SOC and lower clock speeds to stay in the same TDP range for 28 nm ? It doesn’t appear that writers do any analysis before posting fantasy as facts.

I don’t know WHAT, if anything AMD will have in spring/summer 2016 but if there is something then,
1) Zen based CPU for desktop (yes, only for ‘desktop’).
2) Next iteration of excavator but on scalar 20/22 nm process with better performance/watt.

Nothing else makes sense to me.

Rex Lajos

What a strange article. There is no release date, therefor, no delay. I wasted a couple minutes on this article that I want back.

RV

ZEN is NOT delayed. A release date was NEVER announced. Zen is on schedule.

More EXTREMEBS.

RedSocks157

I’m hoping they release one more FM2+ processor. I would love to put it in my HTPC. It’s hard to tell if they plan on doing that though, I’ve seen everything from FM2 is dead to Bristol Ridge will be on FM2+. Now Carrizo might be coming, but would it be on FM2+ or on one of their new sockets that they are working on?

I really wish there was some solid information.

exjohn

Zen was always q4/2016… how delay?

caseywest

Article is strange and factually incorrect. Does this website use an editor?

Also last reported according to an “insider” there are claims that Zen is ahead of schedule and possibly releasing as early as Q2.

EndangeredTechman

Pretty sure the tables are fake as in one they reffer to gcn third generation and AMD only recognizes 2 generations officially so far.

e92m3

mmm good point. I didn’t catch that one. Vastly inconsistent analysis in this article…

EndangeredTechman

whoops. NVM. Found other slides from live presentations where AMD referred to Tonga as 3rd gen about half a year ago. They really need to stop making BS slides. They are starting to confuse themselves. So if Greenland is 2nd gen and Tonga was 3rd when will Benjamin Button be released? I’m gonna buy it when it comes out, its gonna blow NVidia’s GTX “The Doctor” out of this century.
But in all seriousness AMD should FIRE there entire PR team and double down on engineering.

Ira Wechsler

This article is full of distortion. AMD never said this past May that Zen cpus would be shipping in the 2nd quarter 2016

. They have consistently said since they announced Zen that it would ship in the 4th quarter. There is NO delay it is the media detractors and yellow journalists that have created a delay that never was.

e92m3

I’m going to guess ‘No’ to this without much personal doubt. Those SKUs do not make sense and I do not see much revenue being generated from such products. They directly compete with existing products that still need to be sold and do not offer a significant advantage outside of mobile implementations.
Calling fake slides on this one, I think it pretty obvious…

Zen cannot logically be ‘delayed’ when it was never stated that it would be released before ’16 q4…

>savt

Bristol Ridge is Carrizo, well, both use Excavator cores, from what I know, Bristol Ridge is an updated version of Carrizo if not just a version that comes socketed, which, is pretty kick ass, the energy savings on Carrizo makes for some surprising fun, I can max out my 7600 (a 65 watt TDP cpu) at 4050 mhz and my rig will boot and reliably run, the energy savings with Bristol Ridge at the same frequencies what my CPU can run means that further overclocking using hopefully similar tuning methods I use while keeping in the 65 watt area, hopefully upwards of 4.3 ghz, the 5 to 15% IPC increase is just a heaping of frosting on this cake

Tim Tian

Aww, shucks. Whatever you’re doing, it’s broken in my browser (Chrome 49.0.2587.3 (Official Build) dev-m (64-bit)), even with extensions off. I suspect it has something to do with ziffdavis.com.

Jay

I’m getting to a point now I’m giving up on AMD. I skipped the Bulldozer based garbage they put out since the FX processors aren’t that good. I’m still running a Phenom II 975 because of the Bulldozer architecture. Now if they delaying Zen I’m going to be pretty much done with AMD CPU’s. AMD cannot get it together with their CPU’s any more.

kool1982

its not delayed

Rex Lajos

This is great news for the Am4 mobos. instead of upgrading my current rig to am4, I’ll just start building an am4 rig with my excess gpus and a Bristol Ridge apu and grab a zen cpu when they release late 2016!!!

RV

Hmmmm….

“AMD has once again confirmed that its new Zen architecture CPUs for desktops are on target for a 2016 launch, following reports that the AM4 platform is due to launch as early as March. This marks the second time that AMD has officially confirmed that its new CPU architecture will launch next year, which will replace the current batch of FX-series processors.

This update came out during the Raymond James Technology Investors Conference (Via Wccftech), during which AMD’s CFO, Devinder Kumar discussed some of the business plan for the next year, which includes stabilizing the computer and graphics businesses.

“I think the key is getting through 2016 is to continue to stabilize the computing and graphics business, commercial, professional graphics embedded and even the high-end desktops with the Zen Core should all be accretive from a margin standpoint.””

I’m going to need the “delay” explained to me better. The linked article for “Zen’s delay” and this article don’t really offer much to show a delay. That article even downplays its rumor source. What period did AMD say Zen should be available, or shipping or whatever?

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